


The Same Road

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Brother Feels, Brotherly Love, Child Neglect, Gen, Hunters, POV Outsider, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1576406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven-year-old Tommy does his best to care for his younger brother and sister and keep them fed, even if that means going hungry himself. The two big, suspicious-looking guys in the corner booth of the diner have him pretty worried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Road

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Shone Light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298005) by [donutsweeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper). 



Tommy scoped the diner before he took Jesse and Clara inside. It looked OK. He eyeballed the big, 1960s black muscle car in the parking lot with some suspicion, but it was shiny and well-cared for, which allayed his worry somewhat. Mama said that bad people didn’t often take very good care of their cars, and drove older, beat-up ones. It didn’t always mean they were bad, but it was one thing to check for.

One thing on a long list. 

Tommy forced himself not to get the money out of his pocket and count it before they were safely at their table in the diner. He’d already brought his brother and sister further away from their motel room than he should have—Mama said not to draw attention to themselves, or let anyone know they didn’t have a grown-up right nearby, and that was harder to sell the further he went from where they were staying. But this diner was a lot cheaper than any of the closer restaurants, and he knew Jesse in particular was getting pretty hungry. He had to get him some really solid food before he cried. He’d learned to hide it better lately, but if Tommy put him to bed too hungry, Jesse sometimes cried after he thought Tommy was asleep. Hearing him cry made Tommy’s stomach hurt so much he couldn’t eat for two days, even if he could get the food.

Unless Mama came home. Which Tommy really hoped she would, soon, because though he’d been as careful as he could, they were running out of money fast.

He didn’t worry as much about Clara. Little kids hardly ate anything. At barely four, Clara could go all day on two bites of a grilled cheese and three or four french fries, but Jesse was growing fast, and needed more food. Tommy would do just about anything to get it for him. He’d been trying out some new methods, but they were risky, and there was no place to use them in this desolate strip of two or three motels, as many gas stations, and a handful of restaurants that was the “town” Mama had left them in this time.

While Jesse and Clara clamored happily for grilled cheese, Tommy scoped the inside of the restaurant. Two guys caught his eye right away—not because they were “suspicious characters,” as Mama might say. Even though they definitely were. No, there was something else familiar about them.

They were really big and scary, and the taller one was watching Tommy and his siblings while pretending not to, making it so Tommy couldn’t catch him looking. Tommy knew that trick; he used it himself all the time. But they were relaxed, which Mama said was usually a good sign, and they were about to leave, which Tommy knew _he_ was glad of. Tommy didn’t think they were a threat. They definitely weren’t the type to call CPS on them, and that was the worst thing Tommy usually had to watch out for, when Mama was gone more than a few days.

He figured out what it was as the waitress took their order. These people looked like the kinds of people Mama talked to sometimes, usually late at night when she thought Tommy was sleeping. They were a lot younger than most of those guys, but they wore the same kinds of clothes, and the shorter one wore a necklace that looked like some of the things Mama sometimes wore, or more often hid from him—things she didn’t think Tommy knew about.

But he did know. He knew about monsters—that they were real, and that they’d killed their father. He even knew some things about protecting his family from them. He hoped that soon, Mama would decide that eleven was old enough to tell him the truth, and stop pretending the salt and the holy water and the symbols she sometimes drew were just for pretend, just something she wanted Tommy to do while she was gone to make her feel better, to make him miss her less. They didn’t work for that, but Tommy knew they worked for other things.

A lot of times Mama left the morning after the people who looked like these guys visited. Tommy figured they wanted Revenge, too.

After Dad died, Mama talked about Revenge a lot, whenever she thought Tommy couldn’t hear, and once Tommy had figured out what it meant, he’d wondered who she could possibly want to punish because Dad had died on an elk-hunting trip in the mountains. A few late-night eavesdropping sessions later, and Tommy knew Dad’s death wasn’t an accident. Something had killed him, and Mama wouldn’t stop dragging them from town to town, living in hotel rooms or abandoned houses and only making him go to school for a couple weeks here and there, until she found the thing and killed it. Revenge.

Tommy’s stomach growled as the scent of the diner food woke it up. He quieted it sternly. Jesse had already started noticing that Tommy skipped most meals when Mama had been gone a few days. Jesse had also started slipping some of his food to Clara, worried that _she_ wasn’t getting enough. Acting like his older brother already. It made Tommy smile, but it hurt at the same time. But Jesse was still little enough to cry sometimes, and if heard Tommy’s stomach growl, he might, and Tommy couldn’t take it.

Tommy distracted himself from his hunger by watching the two men who reminded him of Mama’s friends. He thought the shorter (still very tall) one was the older one. They’d both ordered full meals, but the shorter one still ate what was left on the taller one’s plate, like an old habit. Like Tommy always did. Sometimes whatever was left on Jesse or Clara’s plate was all he got to eat for a couple of days. 

Suddenly, Tommy was sure the men were brothers.

He thought it was the taller one who’d been watching him, but it was the shorter one who tried to pull something. The two men got up to leave and Tommy tensed; he could tell from the way they moved—casually, careful not to _act_ like they had weapons on them—that they definitely did. Tommy’s senses screamed to full alert when the man pretended to find some money on the floor that he actually slipped out of his pocket, then insisted on giving it to him.

“Here, kid, you dropped this,” he said. 

There was a glint in his green eyes that meant something. Tommy wasn’t sure what, but though he was afraid to take the money, and made a token protest, he knew he could trust the man. He _wouldn’t,_ not outside this one transaction. But he knew he could.

His eyes widened. It wasn’t a dollar bill, which Tommy would’ve welcomed enough. And it wasn’t a twenty, which would have made Tommy suspicious that the guy would want something for it, and would come back and try to take it, though their whole family didn’t have one thing anyone would want. It was a ten. With this much money, if Tommy could sneak out after Jesse and Clara were asleep and walk the several miles to the nearest grocery store…

The taller one was watching his brother curiously, and his brother was watching Tommy. Checking for something. Tommy didn’t know what, but he smiled when he finally accepted the money. He couldn’t help it.

“Thanks,” he said softly. Clara’s happy chatter, as she argued with Jesse about what crayons to use to color the paper placemats the waitress had given them, covered the entire transaction. 

“Take it easy, kid,” the man said as he walked away.

Tommy watched through the window as the pair got in their car, which made an incredibly loud growl that rumbled through the floor under his feet when the man started it. As it drove away in a puff of dust, Tommy wondered, wistfully, if he’d ever be that strong, tall and capable. If he could ever do what Mama did. 

He was sure that Mama would catch the monster that had killed their father. Tommy hoped he could be by her side when she did, fighting to protect their family. Somehow, he knew that the pair of brothers who had just left had something to protect, too. That they and his mother, and soon enough, he himself, travelled the same road.

Maybe they would meet on that road again someday.

~The End~


End file.
